Reaction was fierce Thursday as news exploded that the decades-long run of the San Diego Chargers was over, a permanent and ignominious curtain drawn in the wake of another unspectacular season.
Someone unleashed a carton of eggs at the Chargers headquarters in Mission Valley within hours of the announcement that the team was pulling up stakes after 56 years and moving north to dreaded Los Angeles
Others cheered as they burned Chargers memorabilia in open revolt. Thousands vented on social media, blaming team owner Dean Spanos, Mayor Kevin Faulconer, business leaders opposed to the failed November stadium measure and seemingly anyone they could find.
“Spanos is delusional if he thinks anyone will care about them in L.A. San Diego is the only home for the Chargers,” Sean Rodiek posted on what is now the Los Angeles Chargers Facebook page. “Between the Rams and them, they’d be lucky to fill a stadium in the next couple years.”
The Chargers, who migrated south from Los Angeles in 1961, made official early Thursday morning what had been rumored for years: The National Football League franchise will join the Rams in Los Angeles for the 2017 season.
By 8 a.m. team officials had changed their logo, supplanting “SD” with a Dodgers-like “LA” and adding a jagged strike of lightning to the end of the L, where it crosses the A.
One enterprising former Chargers fan added the letters “ME” after “LA” and offered T-shirts featuring the altered version of the logo for sale at $29.99.
The Chargers meanwhile scrubbed “San Diego” from the team website and edited America’s Finest City out of its social media profiles.
Spanos, who rejected a $350 million subsidy from the city of San Diego to help fund a new stadium, posted a brief letter to fans on Twitter.
“The Chargers are determined to fight for L.A. and we are excited to get started,” he wrote.
The move was widely criticized as aloof and cowardly.
“Nobody’s happy about it, that’s all I can say right now,” said Barbara Hash, who was tending a full bar mid-day at the Stadium Club just east of Qualcomm Stadium, the aging arena that drove Spanos from San Diego. “We’re all feeling pretty bad.”
The decision to leave followed a decisive rejection by voters in November of a ballot initiative that would have raised hotel taxes by more than $1 billion to pay for a new stadium downtown.
Measure C, which was endorsed by Faulconer and numerous San Diego business leaders but staunchly opposed by most hotel operators, received barely 43 percent of ballots cast.
Editors at USA Today took the unusual step of publishing an editorial headlined: “Congrats San Diego, you win by losing Chargers.” The piece criticized the Chargers and the National Football League in general for insisting that governments spend billions of public dollars erecting new shrines for privately owned teams.
Pollster John Nienstedt, who has surveyed San Diegans about public affairs for years, said Spanos should have modeled his quest for a new stadium after baseball’s San Diego Padres, who sold voters on Petco Park after sweeping through the National League playoffs in 1998 and getting to the World Series.
“Where the Padres did everything right, the Chargers did everything wrong,” said Nienstedt, a longtime fan who was in Miami for the team’s only Super Bowl appearance — a 49-26 drubbing at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers in 1995.
“The next time the Chargers make the right PR move, it’ll be the first time,” he said. “They have made blunder after blunder after blunder after blunder.”
Dan Jauregui, better known as “Boltman” for the neon yellow lightning bolt-shaped mask he wears at most Chargers home games, said Spanos and Faulconer both could have done a better job communicating with each other and the public. Nonetheless, Jauregui placed ultimate responsibility for the move to Los Angeles on San Diego area hotel owners.
“We’re all disappointed, but if there’s going to be any finger-pointing the hoteliers are to blame,” he said. “The hoteliers played a huge role in influencing people at City Hall.”
Jauregui said he was still digesting the announcement and could not say whether he would follow the team north.
“They’re still the Chargers, and I believe there is still life left in Boltman,” he said. “But if I answered now I would be responding on an emotional level, and I would regret it.”
Pat Kimbrel taught physical education at Oceanside High School for 33 years before retiring in 2007. He spent three of those years coaching standout Junior Seau, who went on to become a Hall of Fame linebacker for the San Diego Chargers.
Kimbrel, now co-president of the Oceanside High School Foundation, said he was not surprised by the team’s decision to move because it had been brewing for several years.
“All along there has been a sense of disappointment because of their historic connection to San Diego and what they brought to the community,” he said. “To see that leave, especially after a half a century, is disappointing.”
Kimbrel said his most famous former student helped define the San Diego Chargers for a generation of fans.
Seau “reached a level of excellence and professionalism that I don’t think anybody else can compare too,” he said. “But he comes from a long line of tradition of excellence out of Oceanside.”
The 12-time Pro Bowl selectee committed suicide in 2012. Seau was later diagnosed with brain damage from years of violent contact.
Arnie Graham echoed the sentiments of many of the Chargers faithful when he publicly divorced himself from his lifelong team — and predicted that thousands of others would similarly abandon the club.
“My family have been season ticket holders since 1969,” Graham wrote on the Chargers Facebook page. “We will not follow the L.A. Chargers. Nor will 80 percent of San Diegans.”
Kris Nelson, who has owned Bluestocking Books on Fifth Avenue in Hillcrest since 1999, said her customers were less than overcome by the Chargers’ plan to leave town.
“I haven’t heard any word in the bookstore about the Chargers leaving, but my sports-loving family is wrung out emotionally,” she said. “They are genuinely sad for losing their team.”
Nelson said she couldn’t help be mindful that no one at City Hall offered to subsidize her business.
“Major-league sports teams have a lot of advantages that a small business would never get,” she said. “So I’m not sure there’s a lot of sympathy there.”
jeff.mcdonald@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1708 @sdutMcDonald
